A variety of web sites transmit music over the Internet. One manner in which this occurs involves an end user computer connected to the Internet which sends a request for music to a radio station web site. When the web site gets that request, it “sends” music to the user by sending various digitally-encoded packets. Typically, the radio web site transmits whatever music is broadcast at the time by the radio station. In this scenario, the user is not getting files of specific songs, but rather the opportunity to listen to a radio broadcast over the Internet instead of airwaves. When the packets arrive at the end user's computer, the packets are reassembled in the correct order and converted into audio signals. The audio signals are then provided to the speakers connected to the computer.
There are many services which specialize in streaming music over the Internet, such as www.NetRadio.com. These services typically make a number of different audio streams available to end users. They may also be played using typical audio playing software such as RealNetworks, Inc.'s Real Player 7 and Microsoft's Windows Media Player 7.
It is common to analogize the availability of songs from different sources or the same source as “channels”. Each channel may be considered to represent the connection between two computers whereby one computer sends audio signals to another over a network. For example, one channel on the web site www.a.com may stream rock songs whereas another channel on www.b.com may stream pop songs. When a user's computer connects to www.a.com, the web server hosting that web site will stream the currently-playing rock song to the computer. Channels may be available from URL's with different Internet domain names. Alternatively, two channels may originate from the same web site and server. In other words, two channels may comprise a computer simultaneously accessing two different songs from the same web server at the same time. For example, each of the two songs may be divided into discrete pieces of data, with a piece of the first song arriving, then a piece of the second song arriving, then another piece of the first song arriving, then another piece of the second song arriving, etc.
One of the current problems with Internet music channels is the number of available channels. There may be hundreds of channels to choose from and it is often difficult for the user to find a song they want to hear. Moreover, even if the user finds a song on a channel they like, the next song on the channel may not be as interesting to the user as another song on another channel.